Chapter 5 Fire On Forsythia Lane #3
Weston shrugs, spinning the cube. “I don’t know. Sounded like it from what he said last night. I mean, he laughed as he watched the house burn. And he said something like, ‘That bastard finally got what was coming to him.’”
“Did you notice anything else strange about him?”
“Other than the fact that he was drunk?” Weston ponders it for a moment. “He was smoking a cigarette.”
I bite my lip, sliding a stack of clothes into a box for donations and folding the flap shut. “That sounds… suspicious. And you said he came out of the woods?”
“Yeah, but would you really do that? I mean, if you burned someone’s house down, would you hang around the scene of the crime just to watch it burn? I guess if you were a psycho, maybe… but you’d think an ex-con would be a little more careful to not get arrested again.”
“Well, you said he was drunk. People do stupid things when they’re drunk.” I look down at the floor, unpleasant memories of my own springing to mind—the drunk driver who caused the car accident that rendered me blind two summers ago. “Were you the only one who saw this Boone guy?”
“No.” Weston sighs. “Marcus was there, too. He heard everything and probably wrote it down. He’s all gung-ho about making sure the Chronicle is the first outlet to break this story. Which really means making sure he’s the first one to break the story.”
I study him for a moment, reading between the lines. “I take it you and Marcus don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things.”
Weston lets out a sarcastic laugh. “The guy’s on a major ego trip. Thinks he’s still working for the New York Times and I’m just his water boy. Or… Keurig boy, I guess.”
“Why did he leave the Times?”
“He didn’t leave; he was laid off. He only worked there for a few months, fact-checking obituaries or something.
” Weston leans forward on his knees, scrabbling the Rubik’s Cube faster now.
“I think this is the first job he’s ever had with a little bit of authority, and it’s already gone to his head.
But Dad’s pretty desperate for writers, so I’ve been choking down my pride.
” He shoots me an impossibly cute smirk.
“You looking for a job? You could fill his place.”
I hum a laugh, tipping my head back. “That’s not the sort of writing I do, Wes.”
“Benefits are pretty good,” he assures me with a wink. “I’ll bring you coffee every hour—or tea, if you prefer. I’ll give you neck massages, foot massages… We can make out in your cubicle when nobody’s looking.”
I roll my eyes, grinning at the highly improbable fantasy. “If you start a fiction or poetry column, maybe I’ll consider it.”
Weston slumps defeatedly, tilting the Rubik’s Cube at different angles. He’s managed to solve two sides of it—red and yellow—but the rest is a jumble. “This thing is impossible to solve.”
“Not true,” I needle him, snatching the cube out of his hands. “I solved it once, when I was younger.”
“Of course you did, you frickin’ genius.” He flops backward on the bed with a sigh, watching me fiddle with the cube. “Let me guess: you were four years old.”
“No, not that little. The trick is to break the problem down into smaller steps… Sometimes the move that looks the most wrong is actually the right one.”
I fidget with the cube for a moment while Weston watches me, uncharacteristically silent. At first, I think he’s just that entranced by watching me try to solve the Rubik’s Cube, but when I glance up at him, he’s lost in thought, his eyes dazed.
“What’s that scheming face for?” I ask. “You’re still thinking about the fire, aren’t you?”
He confirms my suspicions by diving right back into the topic. “The neighbor who called the fire department… she lives across the street from the Montgomery place. Marcus tried to question her, but she ran back inside her house like she was scared to talk about it.”
“You think she knows something?”
“I think if anyone knows something, it would be her.” Weston gets to his feet and leans down to kiss the top of my head. “I have to go to work. Marcus will be thirsty for his midmorning coffee right about now.”
I laugh, squeezing his hand before he walks away.
“Good luck solving that cube.”
WESTON
Sure enough, as soon as I show up at the Chronicle, Marcus’s first words to me are, “Weston, sleeping in again? Well, I guess you were up past your bedtime last night. Coffee would be nice. Just when you get the chance.” He cuts me a withering smile, then swivels back around to face his computer.
He’s wearing a different suit jacket this morning. Navy blue, with a matching tie. He has all the style of a New York stockbroker and all the charm of a colonoscopy.
“Coming right up,” I answer with an unbothered smile, dropping the act as soon as my back is turned.
I find Rachel at the Keurig machine, whipping up her usual hazelnut decaf with a packet of stevia. She’s still a goddess, still has the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen, and I’m pretty sure she’s still secretly in love with me (despite the giant engagement ring on her left hand).
“Good morning, Weston. You look like you didn’t sleep much last night.”
That gets us talking about the fire on Forsythia Lane and all the mysterious rumors surrounding it. Apparently, Marcus has already been blabbing about the run-in we had last night with Boone, because Rachel seems pretty convinced he is the prime suspect in a case of revenge arson.
“It does seem pretty coincidental that the former owner of the house is an ex-con who just happened to be nearby at the time of the fire,” she says, stirring stevia into her coffee while I start making a cup for Marcus.
Just to get under his skin, I decide to make him a hazelnut decaf too—because I know he hates it.
“I think they’re still investigating the cause,” I point out. “There’s no proof it was intentional.”
“Oh, there’s proof, alright.” Rachel blinks her gigantic eyelashes over the rim of her coffee mug.
“My fiancé has a cousin on the fire squad, and he said—off the record—that they found evidence of accelerant that must’ve been used to start the fire.
That’s why it spread so fast. But, y’know, this is all hush-hush.
Apparently, if there’s any possibility of arson, it’s usually kept quiet until the investigation is complete. So you didn’t hear that from me.”
“My lips are sealed,” I assure her.
I wish I could say the same for my highbrow coworker.
Rachel sighs. “Well, I’d better get back to writing this week’s obits. Not that they’re going anywhere.”
I grunt a laugh at her morbid joke and pull Marcus’s coffee out as soon as the Keurig stops grumbling. Seconds later, I’m plunking the mug down on his desk.
“What’ve you been telling people about Boone?”
Marcus frowns, eyeballing me the way a celebrity might look at a pleb who broke past a velvet rope to ask him an unsolicited question. “I’ve only told the truth about what I saw last night. What I heard.”
He picks up the mug of coffee and takes a long swig, not realizing what flavor it is until he swallows. I get the satisfaction of watching him grimace and clear his throat.
“In the world of investigative reporting, you need to consider even the smallest indicators that point to something being not quite right. You were there, Weston. You probably shouldn’t have been, but you were. You saw what I saw.”
“I’m not sure what I saw. A drunk dude coming out of the woods saying Montgomery finally got what was coming to him.” I place my fists on the desk, leaning closer and lowering my voice. “You don’t know that he’s guilty of anything except laughing at someone else’s loss.”
“Did you know Jonathan Boone has a prison record?”
“Yeah, for driving while intoxicated. Not for arson.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not capable of arson.”
“Anyone is capable of arson,” I volley back.
“You, me, Rachel. Just because someone is capable of committing a crime doesn’t mean they’re guilty of it.
For example, I’m within poisoning proximity of your hazelnut decaf.
Not that I would actually poison you. But I am capable of it. See the difference?”
Marcus stares at me for a long moment—looking a bit unnerved—before he finally chuckles, shaking his head. “You should be a lawyer when you grow up, Weston.”
When you grow up. Inwardly, I bristle at the veiled insult. Outwardly, I grin.
“I think I’d rather be an MMA fighter. I’ve heard it’s considered rude to punch people in the courtroom.”
Marcus shakes his head, swerving back to his computer to click open a minimized window. “I’ve done some digging,” he says. “Jonathan Boone’s criminal records, traffic violations, previous addresses, and his current residence.”
With another click, he brings up a map of Rockford. I can’t help noticing that he’s already routed the distance between the Montgomery house and the backwoods trailer park on the end of Wolf Spider Hollow, where Boone must be living now.
“Look at that,” Marcus says, pointing to the sidebar displaying the route. “Two point seven miles from the Montgomery house. He couldn’t have walked from there to the fire unless he was nearby before the fire started.”
“First of all, he didn’t come down the road; he came out of the woods. And who says he walked from his house? He was probably out drinking in town. The local bar stays open till midnight.”
“Which would still have given him enough time to leave the bar and go set the Montgomery house on fire.”
I frown, narrowing my eyes at him. “You don’t know that’s what happened.”
“And you don’t know that’s not what happened,” Marcus insists. “I’m not casting blame on anyone; I’m merely deducing and conjecturing. That’s my job.”
“Really? Thought you were a reporter, not a detective.”
Marcus sighs. “Look. As long as this investigation is kept under wraps, nobody has proof of anything. Montgomery has made no public comments thus far—he’s refusing to talk to anyone but his lawyers.”
“Was he really out of town when it happened?”